This bench was a collaboration with my friend and sculptor, Bruce Gueswel. Bruce was asked by the Loveland Museum/Gallery in Loveland, CO to make a bench in Beal’s honor. Upon learning more about Beal’s fiber art and love of color, Bruce thought my work would be a good fit for this project. So one afternoon, Bruce and I got together and co-designed the bench. We decided Bruce’s job was to weld the metal framework and my job was to do the woodworking.

Stephen Beal was a needlepoint artist, who used DMC embroidery floss in his beautiful cross stitched artworks. He also wrote poetry about the embroidery floss that are wonderful little love letters to color. We wanted to include some of Stephen’s poetry so we had 8 lines of text laser etched onto the back slats. The inclusion of color was also important but we didn’t want it to compete with any artwork the bench would be sitting near during future art shows. Color was added to the edges of the side and back slats and to the sides of the seat slats. The seat slats have 2 different colors applied to each slat, a blue gray on one side, and on the opposite side, a red violet. So when you look at the bench from one end, it feels rather subdued with the blues. And when viewed from the other end, the vibrant red violet really pops. This makes the bench orientation customizable for each art show in the gallery.